Thursday, November 29, 2007

funny drawings from Flintstone - Carlo Vinci

Carlo has a really unique drawing and posing style.There's something rude about it and I like that.Do you feel shame shivers?

CARLO VINCICarlo Vinci was a dancer and a man's man at the same time. His poses have an awkward gracefulness about them. Look for lots of bent wrists.

Another dead giveaway: He likes to cock their heads at jaunty angles for accents in dialogue.

His anticipations are always recognizable. They are funny and add life and character to the cartoons. It's as if they are performers who know they are up on stage in front of you and mean to let you know they are putting on a show.

Fred is a well-cultured oaf in Carlo's hands.His poses are off-balance yet flowing at the same time.I like the early episodes when they drew Fred's hair with blunt ends.Carlo hardly ever has the hands doing the same thing. Usually one is up, the other down. And they alternate. moving back and forth.He loves to flop their noses around too. It grabs Wilma's attention for sure.Barney is a peeping Tom in all the episodes.Carlo has very distinct scrambles and zip outs.Note the DVNR on the toes and the hair.

Fred Dies

Fred's missing his equipment.Carlo Vinci has heartCarlo's style is really easy to see when you contrast it to Ken Muse, who doesn't add much to the layout poses. Ken Muse:I can recognize Muse's style by how even and straight up and down everything is.Compare to Carlo:Carlo likes to use a zig-zag line of action in his poses, like Fred above. Awkward-elegance. I don't know any other animator who does that.

He also does the best nose-molestation. If you wanna see that, I can put some up tomorrow.

27 comments:

Great post! It takes real talent to squeeze in that much character with just poses. I always like it when you can get a sense for what the character is feeling even if they were in silhouette. Carlo Vinci has that down. Too good. Thanks for the screen grabs. I'm going to study these.

Those are wonderful screen grabs. Great inspiration for someone working on a thesis film. Nothing like fun poses to observe before starting on your work.

Interesting how you managed to distinguish the styles of both artists. I knew that certain episodes/scenes appeared to be different in terms of the character's movements, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I like Vinci's exaggerated overlapping action -- he seems to have a real understanding of weight.

I should probably examine the credits at the end of classic HB cartoons more closely and look up these artists. Another lesson learned.

Even though the framegrab of Barney has DVNR artifacts, it doesn't look so bad compared to something like the Droopy DVD or the Woody DVD.

Boy! Carlo Vinci was definitely a master of funny drawing. Even some of his animation (or at least I think its him) at MGM is funny. Too bad the H-B studio quickly degenerated into some depressing assembly line or a factory (In fact, several of the greats of the Golden Age ended up there. Tex Avery anyone?).

Zig-zag line of action. Are you talking about the right angles in Fred's arm as he tweaks Barney's nose? If so, I think that may be a Chuck Jones innovation (that Carlo used well of course). Although, I'm still not 100% sure what you are referring to here. Maybe draw a red line indicating Carlo's line of action in the shot if possible just so all can more clearly see how Carlo worked.

That's some crazy DVNR in Barney's foot. It looks like he stepped in pudding.

>>Zig-zag line of action. Are you talking about the right angles in Fred's arm as he tweaks Barney's nose?<<

I think the zig zag line of action is the controposto pose of Fred with all his weight on one leg. If you draw a line from the top of Freds head to his right shoulder, to his left hip to his right foot will make a zig zag.

One of my assignments was to animate a Rooster for an 'indie' short - Jill had designed him, and his design had like ten different S-curves in the construction. (They gave him to me because the shapes are complicated as hell, and I'm better at that than the rest of the collective.)

I was going insane trying to do lines-of-action and etc. in him, and then I remembered this post and decided to study Carlo and try to get some of the odd zigzags he got in (There's a few bits of my own style in him, like the odd eye shapes and twitchy tail, but it's otherwise all him).I got compliments from all sides when i showed my first test of him. 0u0

Thank you for showing me this guy, several months after the fact. He is a goddamn genius (And I'm learning to identify his HB style...I'm wondering if he had his style when working on Van Beuren?).

(It is admitted that even geniuses can be quashed by either too much interference or by overpowering stock. Ken Duncan and T.Dan Hoftstedt spent years in the Bluth pit and none of their shit looks like their later styles.Don Bluth had a very unique sense of motion as an animator with very little stock ACTION; then he moved to directing films made up entirely of stock and watercolor that were mainly good in spite of themselves (by being overtly Picaresque or post-derivative or 'atmospheric' enough to outweight the faults). I sometimes wonder what his films would look like if he just animated shit for himself instead of supervising faceless hordes with orders to 'watch the arcs' more than cartoony action or character.(If you ever get a chance to see some of his storyboards or layout poses, he would indicate detailed and bad tasted animation extremes right on the boards, with mechanical perspective grids in the BG. Even worse than Chuck Jones he acts through the poses of bland arcs. >.<))